Essex County

Success Story

Tired of a costly and unreliable operating system, Essex County migrated to Linux. Running SUSE Linux Enterprise Server helps the county do more with its IT environment, while staying within budget. Moving its back-end accounting system to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server has reduced software costs by 35 percent.

Overview

Essex County is Canada's southernmost county - at the same latitude as northern California - and it is one of the most agriculturally productive counties in the country. Essex County has a population of over 166,000 citizens and an agricultural output of C$237,796,000, greater than that of any one of the four Atlantic provinces.

Challenge

For a county government, small IT budgets are a common concern. The IT staff at Essex County stays focused on reducing costs and making the most of its investments. However, its Microsoft* Windows* environment was proving costly to administer with constant security patches and occasional downtime. Complicated and expensive licensing programs were also a big factor.

To reduce costs and improve stability, the county decided to migrate to Linux. While successful, the IT staff struggled to find the right Linux tools to manage its environment and began evaluating other Linux options.

Novell solution

"With SUSE Linux and access to open source tools, we can implement far more services than we thought possible. Without it, running our environment would be significantly more expensive and we would be forced to spend most of our time putting out fires, rather than implementing new and better technologies."

"We were slightly fearful about porting two DNS servers because we could not have them offline. We moved them to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and it was a snap. Our SUSE servers are so stable we could keep them in a closet."

Jim Gignac
IT Administrator
Essex County, Canada

The county IT staff attended a training course on using firewalls where the instructor had recently migrated to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. The county then experimented with SUSE Linux and was impressed with its ease of use.

"When we started using SUSE Linux, we found that its interface and tools were logically organized and more intuitive than those of Red Hat," said Jim Gignac. "YaST is really what attracted us and makes everything simple to administer. Even someone with limited technical experience could quickly pick up SUSE Linux and be productive in a short period of time."

Essex County runs its mission-critical accounting system on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server on IBM* xSeries servers.

"Running our backend accounting system on Linux was a huge leap for us," said Gignac. "We moved from Windows 2000 to Red Hat* Linux, then to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server with an IBM DB2 database and saw a big increase in speed and reliability. The server has not even had a hiccup."

With improved reliability, the county IT staff no longer spends it time patching systems and checks its servers a few times a month, rather than every day.

"In the past, we battled downtime, lockups and general instability," said Gignac. "To date, we haven't had a single virus issue with our SUSE Linux servers."

The team recently ported its two DNS servers to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server in response to a mandate from the Canadian government to provide Internet services to participating municipalities. The county can now provide DNS services to thousands of users without incurring high costs.

"We were slightly fearful about porting two DNS servers because we could not have them offline," said Gignac. "We moved them to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and it was a snap. Our SUSE servers are so stable we could keep them in a closet."

Linux and open source tools have expanded the development possibilities for a small IT staff on a lean budget.

"We like the freedom of choice we get with Linux and the support of the open source community," said Gignac. "If there is a bug or problem, you have the whole planet working to fix it. We find that issues get resolved nearly instantaneously. Open source is the only way to go."

The county has plans to move many of its desktops to Novell® Linux Desktop, as well as its file and print services to Novell Open Enterprise Server in the coming year to maintain the advantages of NetWare® while moving to Linux.

"We are thrilled that we can move to Open Enterprise Server running on Linux without giving up the capabilities of NetWare," said Gignac. "Having the support of Novell in an open environment is perfect. I've worked with Novell for nearly 20 years and have never had an issue we couldn't resolve. The support is outstanding."

Results

Moving to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server has given Essex County unprecedented stability and security against virus attacks. The IT staff has greatly reduced maintenance time, freeing up time to work on new projects. By moving its accounting system from Windows to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, Essex County has reduced its software costs by 35 percent.

"With SUSE Linux and access to open source tools, we can implement far more services than we thought possible," said Gignac. "Without it, running our environment would be significantly more expensive and we would be forced to spend most of our time putting out fires, rather than implementing new and better technologies."